Dummy not stupid

A recent Monday, 1:02 p.m.: The night Indiana Munoz saw Edgar Bergen bring his Charlie McCarthy dummy to life on “The Ed Sullivan Show,” she decided to be a ventriloquist.
As a child, she practiced her skills using a stuffed monkey, working over and over to make sounds without moving her lips. Her bedroom mirror was a forgiving and ever-patient audience.
After graduating from high school, Munoz took a job as a clerk in a bank. But complications from epilepsy derailed her working career, and dreams of being a master ventriloquist were all but forgotten.
It wasn’t until 14 years ago that Munoz, now 54, finally got her own Charlie McCarthy doll. Her life partner, Edward ?Parker, found a reproduction on the Internet. It was a gift, she says, that saved her life.
Munoz calls her doll Vincent Parker. Vincent because she was looking for a name that felt sophisticated and regal. Parker because she wanted to pay tribute to her soul mate after he died suddenly of a heart attack four years ago.
Munoz lives in a residential hotel in the Tenderloin. Men aren’t allowed there — it’s a safe house for battered women. Munoz found shelter there after she became involved in an abusive relationship after Parker’s death.
Vincent, her muse, gave her strength. He never left her side. And Munoz says she’s never had a seizure while holding Vincent. She can’t help but feel this is more than coincidence.
“It might sound strange — when he looks at me, he feels like he really is a person,” Munoz says as she animates Vincent’s head, mouth and eyebrows with a series of strings and levers hidden in the puppet’s back.
Munoz’s lips barely move as Vincent speaks. “I might be a doll,” he says. “But she put a soul in this doll.”
Alone, Munoz is shy. Vincent provides her with courage.
Three or four days a week, the duo make the rounds in their rough-and-tumble neighborhood. They stop to say hi to shopkeepers and wave to hustling entrepreneurs. Some of the Tenderloin’s toughest inhabitants can’t help but laugh when Munoz transforms her deep voice into Vincent’s high-pitched squeak.
“Little by little, when I’d pass by the same people, they started to know him,” Munoz says. “They love him. I’d pass by and they’d shout out for Vincent.”
Richard “Tank” Fear, a fixture who sits on a rolling suitcase on Eddy Street, can’t wait to see Vincent. His eyes, tired from a lack of sleep and hard times, light up when Munoz and Vincent drift by. Tank reaches out and kisses Vincent’s tiny plastic hand.
“To me he brings life,” Fear said. “He understands me.”